Press Release

Rose B. Simpson: Dream House

September 19, 2022

Among the materials and objects on display are textiles bearing the artist’s signature marks printed in earthy tones in the FWM Studio. Rose B. Simpson, in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. Photo credit: Carlos Avendaño.

Rose B. Simpson Creates Dream House, A Site Specific Installation at Philadelphia’s Fabric Workshop and Museum

Made in Collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, the Immersive Installation Presents Simpson’s First-Ever Video Works, New Ceramic Work, Textile, and Sculpture

October 7, 2022—March 26, 2023
Press Preview: Thursday, October 6

 

Philadelphia, PA, September 19, 2022––The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) is pleased to present a new site-specific, immersive installation by New Mexico-based artist Rose. B Simpson. Simpson, who is best-known for her works in ceramics, was encouraged by the FWM Studio team to explore and experiment with other materials and mediums to create an introspective body of work.

“It’s been an honor working with Rose over the course of two years,” says Executive Director Christina Vassallo. “The structure of the FWM Studio team and our residency program offered her the opportunity to experiment with different processes, such as architectural installation and film, that offer new modes of expression to this celebrated artist’s practice.”

Dream House marks a shift in Simpson’s practice from figurative-based installations and objects to one rooted in personal experience and architecture with an implied figurative presence.

Inspired by Pueblo architecture, her ancestral landscape, and magical realism, Simpson explores the imprints and through-lines that connect and orient her life as an artist, an Indigenous person, and a mother. The multi-room installation constructed at FWM presents Simpson’s perspective on her own domestic narrative, kinship, subconscious, and desire through use of ceramic, textile, sculpture, and the artist’s first-ever works in video, all created in collaboration with the FWM studio team. Many of the ceramics on view were created by Simpson at Philadelphia’s The Clay Studio, a partner on this project. Dream House opens on October 7, 2022 and runs until March 26, 2023.

Simpson’s connection with her multigenerational, matrilineal lineage of ceramicists resonate throughout the installation, developed as spaces reminiscent of the intimate adobe architecture found in Southwest New Mexico. Upon entering FWM’s eighth floor gallery, visitors’ shadows are projected onto the gallery wall, immediately welcoming and acknowledging one’s presence in the space as one enters the installation.

Partitioned into separated rooms that visitors navigate between and peer inside, each presents an aspect of home: safety and emotional comfort, the work of psychological and spiritual growth, as well as abundance and fullness. Built so that visitors can peer inside, the first room features a video work depicting a landscape conveying Simpson’s notions of safety and empowerment, while the space is filled with textiles created to express comfort, along with a tapestry of interwoven figurative ceramic pieces. A table and chairs designed by the artist fill the second room, representing familial influence and the dedication to her practice of self-reflection. Large ceramic masks suspended above the workspace reference a lineage and accountability to forebears and a sustained connection to them. The third room, presenting aspects of fullness, features artist-made clothing, pottery, and shelves. In each of these spaces, Simpson includes video footage capturing important locations and moments of personal resonance.

In the fourth and final space, representing “the present” and located in front of the gallery’s monumental window, Simpson offers a light-filled gathering space for visitors to enter, sit, rest, reflect, and contemplate their own relationship with home and nourishment. Various public programs will be hosted at this communal site throughout the run of the exhibition, offering visitors a deeper connection of self-awareness in relation to place and community.

Organizing Credits

Dream House is organized by Senior Project Coordinator Abby Lutz and Chief Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs DJ Hellerman in collaboration with the artist, and was initiated by Karen Patterson, FWM’s former Director of Exhibitions.

About Rose B. Simpson

Rose B.Simpson (born 1983, lives and works with her young daughter in Santa Clara Pueblo, NM) is a mixed-media artist whose work explores the impact, both emotional and existential, of living in the postmodern and postcolonial world. Simpson has a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Art, an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and an MA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. She has had recent solo exhibitions at the Wheelwright Museum, Santa Fe, NM, the Nevada Art Museum, Reno, NV, and SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA, is featured in a current solo at the ICA Boston and has recently opened Counterculture, a public art installation at Field Farm, Williamstown, MA (2022). Museum collections include the Denver Art Museum, ICA Boston, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Nevada Art Museum, Pomona College Museum of Art, Portland Art Museum, Princeton University Art Museum, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Her work has been featured in The Guardian, The Boston Globe, Art in America, Forbes, Vogue, and The New York Times. Simpson is represented by Jessica Silverman in San Francisco and Jack Shainman Gallery in New York.


Public Events

Reception
Opening Celebration
Thursday, October 6
6:00–8:00 pm

Be among the first to experience Rose B. Simpson, the culmination of the artist’s residency. Light refreshments served

FREE | advance registration encouraged

Member-Exclusive
Who Makes the Art Here, Anyway?
Saturday, October 15
3:00–4:00 pm

Want to meet FWM’s art makers? Interested in learning more about the people who oversee and translate the complex visions of Artists-in-Residence into a reality? Join this members-only guided tour alongside lead Project Coordinators Abby Lutz (Rose B. Simpson: Dream House) and Avery Lawrence (Jayson Musson: His History of Art) and explore FWM’s two latest exhibitions created in collaboration with the artists. You’ll also have the unique chance to take an inside look at the FWM Studio, featuring process materials and current works-in-progress being created for future exhibitions.

FREE for FWM members plus two guests | registration required

Workshop
Ritual of Tea with Dope Botanicals and Natural Dye Workshop
Tuesday, November 1, 2022
6:00–8:00 pm

This autumn, steep yourself in self-care and creative reflection with wellness gurus Taahirah and Nakia Stith of Dope Botanicals. Gather around a table within Rose B. Simpson’s Dream House installation to learn about tea preparation and plant-based alchemical remedies. After enjoying a custom tea blend inspired by Dream House and the fall season, head to our print studio to create your own eco-printed cotton bandana using a variety of tea leaves and flowers!

$85 Public | $75 FWM members | limited space available, advance registration encouraged

Workshop
First Friday: Printing for Gifting
Friday, November 4
4:00–6:00 pm

When speaking about her work and her life, Artist-in-Residence Rose B. Simpson describes a room of fullness, a place from which she has so much to give. With ample materials for screenprinting, block printing, and sculpting available, we invite you to draw from your own fullness to create handmade gifts for your friends and family.

$20 Public | $15 FWM members | advance registration encouraged

All Ages Event
CraftNow Create: Dream Planting with The Fabric Workshop and Museum
Saturday, November 5, 2022
10:00 am–1:00 pm

Smith Memorial Playground and Playhouse, 3500 Reservoir Dr, Philadelphia, PA 19121

Artist Rose B. Simpson grew up on the Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico where houses are made out of clay mixed with straw. In Dream House, which represents the artist’s life journey, some spaces are shared and some are private. The installation tells the story of her past and present, and creates a space to dream of the future. Bring the family to Smith Playground, where we’ll build and plant for the future by making plantable seed paper houses! All ages welcome. This event is co-organized with CraftNow Create.

Free | Learn more about CraftNow Create

Workshop
First Friday: Printing for Gifting
Friday, December 2
4:00–6:00 pm

Make yourself or someone you love a special handmade gift. Participants can choose to screenprint a scarf or bandana as a special item and create prints on paper that can be transformed into one-of-a kind artworks, cards or gift wrap! We’ll be using prepared imagery and monoprinting techniques.

$20 Public | $15 FWM members | advance registration encouraged

Workshop
Print Memory/Reimagining Clothing and Textiles with the Screenprinting Process
Thursday, December 8, 2022
6:30–8:30 pm

FABSCRAP, BOK Building, 1901 S 9th St (Room 601A), Philadelphia, PA 19148

How can we bring clothing from our past into our present? Learn how to draw inspiration from your own memories to create unique motifs that can be converted into screenprinting stencils. We’ll introduce you to monoprinting techniques that can be used to revitalize and transform your old clothing! Bring existing articles of clothing or purchase recycled fabric from the FABSCRAP store. Participants are limited to 2 articles of clothing each. This event is co-organized with FABSCRAP

Registration available via FABSCRAP

All Ages Workshop
First Friday: Dream House Prints
Friday, February 3, 2023
4:00–6:00 pm

FWM’s Artist-in-Residence Rose B. Simpson has used the structure of a house as a metaphor to communicate who and where she is in her life. Create your own screenprinted dream house or create a dream community with family and friends! Learn to build the elements of a home with screenprinted architectural forms and embellish your print with cut paper shapes! Families welcome.

$10 Public | $5 members | $5 kids ages 4-15 | FREE for kids under 4 | advance registration encouraged

Lecture + Workshop
Designing Indigenous Visual Languages with Traditional Ecological Knowledge
Friday, February 3, 2023
2:00–4:30 pm

How can design education support the understanding and revitalization of tribal visual sovereignty and the inclusion of an indigenous perspective? In this lecture and workshop, Sadie Red Wing, a Lakota graphic designer from the Spirit Lake Nation of Fort Totten, North Dakota, will share her background in design education and advocacy and introduce her research in the origins of Lakota symbols. Learn how symbols reflect and evolve from elements of the landscape and explore how to find meaning in place to shape your own visual communication.

After the lecture, explore the creation of your own symbols by reimagining basic shapes that resonate with your own personal history. Each participant will print and take home a commemorative screenprint.

$40 Public | $30 members | $15 students with ID | advance registration encouraged

All Ages Workshop
First Friday: Dream House Prints
Friday, March 3, 2023
4:00–6:00 pm

FWM’s Artist-in-Residence Rose B. Simpson has used the structure of a house as a metaphor to communicate who and where she is in her life. Create your own screenprinted dream house or create a dream community with family and friends! Learn to build the elements of a home with screenprinted architectural forms and embellish your print with cut paper shapes! Families welcome.

$10 Public | $5 members | $5 kids ages 4-15 | FREE for kids under 4 | advance registration encouraged

Workshop
Ritual of Tea with Dope Botanicals and Natural Dye Workshop    
Tuesday, March 14, 2023
6:00–8:00 pm

Step in from the cold and join FWM staff and Taahirah and Nakia Stith of Dope Botanicals around a table within Rose B. Simpson’s Dream House to learn about tea preparation and plant based alchemical remedies. After enjoying a custom tea blend inspired by the winter season and Dream House, head to our print studio to create your own set of tea-dyed napkins, screenprinted with natural mordants!

$85 Public | $75 FWM members | limited space available, advance registration encouraged

More programming to be confirmed soon. Check fabricworkshopandmuseum.org/events for updates.


Downloadable Media

Download the Press Release PDFDownload the Press Release PDF


Related News

Rose B. Simpson Thinks in Clay
Jori Finkel, The New York Times, June 16, 2022

NO. 567: ROSE B. SIMPSON, GEORGE MASA
Tyler Green, Modern Art Notes Podcast, September 15, 2022

Rose B. Simpson Builds A Dream House Where Manifestation Meets Growth
Katy Donoghue, Whitewall Magazine, February 23, 2023

A Revolutionary Idea
Jacqui Agate, Wanderlust, March 1, 2023

Leaving Fingerprints Behind
Alex De Vore, Santa Fe Reporter, March 8, 2023

Reviews: Legacies and Dream House
Christine Garnier, CAA Reviews, March 29, 2023

Two artists take on Philadelphia in this season of PBS’s ‘Art21′
Irma Kiss, The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 13, 2023


Partners & Funding

Major Support for Rose B. Simpson: Dream House has been generously provided by The National Endowment for the Arts, with additional support from Joy of Giving Something, Inc., Girlfriend Fund, Maja Paumgarten and John Parker, Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, Megan O’Reilly-Lewis, and Wayee Chu and Ethan Beard.

In-kind support has been provided by The Clay Studio.

Major support of FWM is provided by the Marion Boulton “Kippy” Stroud Foundation. FWM receives state art funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Additional support is provided by Agnes Gund and the Board of Directors and Members of The Fabric Workshop and Museum.


About the Fabric Workshop and Museum

The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) is an internationally acclaimed contemporary art museum devoted to the creation, presentation, and preservation of innovative works of art. Its mission—Collaborating with artists, revealing new possibilities—embodies a 45-year commitment to helping artists experiment with the expressive possibilities of a broad spectrum of new materials and techniques. Through its renowned Artist-in-Residence Program, FWM provides artists at all stages of their careers with the opportunity to collaborate with its studio staff and take their work in fresh and often unexpected directions. FWM presents large-scale exhibitions, installations, and performative work, utilizing innovative fiber and other media including sculpture, installation, video, painting, photography, ceramics, and architecture. Founded in 1977, FWM brings this spirit of creative investigation and discovery to an eager audience, broadening access to art and advancing its role as a catalyst for innovation and social connection.


Art